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New Orleans Slip and Fall Lawyers
Louisiana wrote a statute specifically to make it hard to win these cases. It is not enough that you fell, or even that the floor was wet. You have to prove how long it was wet - and the video that shows it is being overwritten right now.
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The Short Version
Slip and fall in Louisiana - the quick answers
- Louisiana merchants are not insurers of your safety. Falling in a store does not automatically mean they owe you anything.
- Under La. R.S. 9:2800.6, you must prove three things - and failing any one of them ends the case.
- The hardest is constructive notice: proof the hazard existed long enough that the store should have found it.
- This is called the temporal element, and it is why most slip and fall cases in this state fail.
- An employee standing nearby is not, by itself, constructive notice.
- Surveillance video is the single most important evidence - and it is routinely overwritten within days.
- You generally have 2 years to file (for falls on or after July 1, 2024).
Fell in a store? We're on your side - and we'll be honest with you.
You went to get groceries. You came home with a fractured hip, a surgery you did not plan for, and a manager's business card. It feels obvious. There was water on their floor, and you did not put it there, and now you cannot walk up your own stairs.
And then you find out that Louisiana wrote a law specifically to make this case difficult. Not to make it impossible - to make it hard. It is not enough to prove the floor was wet. You have to prove that it had been wet long enough that a store paying reasonable attention would have found it. That single requirement kills more slip and fall claims in this state than every defense lawyer combined. Which is exactly why the first thing we do is go get the video.
- Send an immediate written demand to preserve the surveillance video
- Obtain the sweep logs, inspection records, and incident report
- Find prior complaints about the same hazard or the same location
- Prove the temporal element - how long the hazard was actually there
- Identify whether the merchant statute or a friendlier standard governs your fall
- Answer the “open and obvious” and comparative fault defenses
- Prove the full cost of a fall injury, including lost independence
- Negotiate hard - and file suit if they refuse to be fair
What to do after a fall in a store
One step on this list is worth more than every other step combined, and you have days - not months - to make it count.
1
Report it before you leave
Tell a manager, and make sure an incident report is created. Get the report number and the manager's name. If you leave without reporting, you have handed them their first argument.
2
Photograph the hazard immediately
The spill. The floor. The lack of a cone. Wide shots and close shots. Within minutes it will be mopped, and it will be as if it never happened.
3
Photograph what caused it
Was the spill dirty? Were there cart tracks or footprints through it? Was it drying at the edges? All of that is evidence that it had been there a while - which is the entire ballgame.
4
Get witnesses
Other shoppers. Employees. Anyone who saw it, and better still, anyone who saw it before you did. A witness who says “that had been there twenty minutes” is worth more than any photograph.
5
Get medical care
Do not tough it out. Hip fractures, wrist fractures, and head injuries from falls are serious, and the record you create in the first days is the foundation of the claim.
6
Call us today - the video is the case
Store surveillance is routinely overwritten in days. It is the only thing that reliably proves how long the hazard was there. A prompt legal preservation demand is frequently the difference between a case and a story.
The Clock On the Video
The proof of your case is being erased right now.
Louisiana requires you to prove the hazard existed long enough that the store should have found it. There is exactly one piece of evidence that reliably shows that: the surveillance footage. And it is on a loop that overwrites - often within days. Nobody is going to preserve it for you, and once it is gone the case usually goes with it. If you fell in a store, call somebody today. Even if it is not us.
La. R.S. 9:2800.6 - the merchant statute
If you fell in a store, a restaurant, or a hotel lobby, this statute governs your case. You must prove all three elements. Failing any one of them ends it.
1. Unreasonable Risk of Harm
You must prove the condition presented an unreasonable risk of harm and that the risk was reasonably foreseeable. A puddle in a walkway usually qualifies. A hazard the store will argue was open and obvious may not.
2. Notice - The Element That Kills Cases
You must prove the merchant created the hazard, or had actual notice of it, or had constructive notice. This is where nearly every case is lost.
Constructive Notice = The Temporal Element
The statute defines it: the condition existed “for such a period of time” that it would have been discovered with reasonable care. The Louisiana Supreme Court requires a positive showing of some time period. Proving the spill existed is not enough - you must prove it existed for a while.
An Employee Nearby Is Not Enough
The statute says so explicitly. The mere presence of an employee in the vicinity does not, alone, establish constructive notice, unless it is shown that the employee knew or should have known.
3. Failure to Exercise Reasonable Care
And even then, you must prove the merchant failed to exercise reasonable care. The statute adds that the absence of a written cleanup policy is not, alone, enough to prove this.
Merchants Are Not Insurers
This is the philosophy behind the whole statute. A Louisiana merchant does not owe you compensation simply because you were hurt on their property. They owe it when they were negligent, and you have to prove it.
This page is general information, not legal advice. Every case turns on its own facts - call us and we'll tell you where you actually stand.
Why most slip and fall cases fail
We are going to be honest with you rather than encouraging, because a lawyer who tells you this is a slam dunk is a lawyer who has not read the statute.
These cases are lost in specific, predictable ways. Every one of them is about the same thing: the store making sure nobody can prove how long the hazard was there.
The Temporal Element“Prove it had been there a while.” No time, no notice. No notice, no case
The Video Is GoneOverwritten within days, and nobody sent a preservation letter because nobody called a lawyer
“We Just Inspected”An employee swept that aisle ten minutes earlier, so the store never had time to discover it
“Open and Obvious”You should have seen it. Whether that defeats a claim is genuinely contested law - it is not the automatic bar stores pretend it is
“You Weren't Looking”And under the 51% rule, comparative fault can now erase a claim entirely, not merely reduce it
No Incident ReportYou left without telling anyone. Now the fall itself is in dispute
Where falls happen
Not every fall is governed by the merchant statute. If you fell in a store, restaurant, or the shop-like areas of a hotel, La. R.S. 9:2800.6 applies with all of its burdens. If you fell somewhere else - an apartment complex, a parking garage, an office building, someone's property - a different and often more favorable body of law applies.
Knowing which one governs your fall is the first thing that has to be figured out, and it changes everything about how the case is built.
Grocery Store SpillsRestaurant FloorsBig Box RetailConvenience StoresHotel LobbiesCasino FloorsFreshly Mopped FloorsProduce & Ice DisplaysLeaking Coolers & FreezersTracked-In RainwaterUneven Flooring & ThresholdsLoose Mats & RugsCluttered Aisles & Stocking BoxesParking Lots
Common slip and fall injuries
There is a reason falls are one of the leading causes of serious injury in this country, and it is not because people are careless. It is because a fall is unbraced. You do not see it coming, so you do not tense, and the impact goes straight into whatever hits first - a wrist, a hip, the back of the skull.
In older adults, a single fall can end independent living entirely. These are not minor cases, and they should never be treated as one:
Hip FracturesWrist & Arm FracturesTraumatic Brain InjuryConcussionBack & Spinal InjuriesHerniated DiscsShoulder TearsKnee InjuriesBroken AnklesFacial InjuriesChronic PainLoss of Independence
The video is the whole case
Everything in a Louisiana slip and fall comes down to one question: how long had that hazard been on the floor? And there is exactly one piece of evidence that answers it reliably.
The store's surveillance footage does not have a story to protect. It shows the spill happen. It shows the fourteen employees who walked past it. It shows the eight minutes, or the forty minutes, before you came around the corner. It is the difference between a case and an anecdote.
And it is on a loop. Depending on the system, that footage may be gone in a week. Nobody at that store is going to preserve it for the benefit of the person suing them - but a written legal preservation demand, sent immediately, obligates them to. This is the single most time-sensitive thing in this entire area of law, and it is why we tell people to call the same week they fall.
Compensation in a slip and fall case
Louisiana law sorts what you can recover into two buckets: the losses you can add up on paper, and the ones you cannot. Both are real, and both are recoverable.
In fall cases the second bucket is frequently where the truth lives - particularly for an older client. A broken hip is a medical bill. Losing the ability to live alone in the house you raised your children in is something else entirely, and it is recoverable, but only if somebody proves it.
Economic damages
- Emergency room, hospital & surgery bills
- Future medical care & rehabilitation
- Physical therapy & ongoing treatment
- In-home care and assistance
- Lost wages and time off work
- Lost future earning capacity
- Assistive equipment and home modifications
Non-economic damages
- Pain and suffering
- Mental anguish & emotional distress
- Permanent scarring & disfigurement
- Loss of enjoyment of life
- Disability & loss of independence
- Fear of falling again
- Loss of consortium
What actually changes when a lawyer steps in
In a slip and fall, the merchant controls virtually every piece of evidence that could prove your case - the video, the inspection logs, the incident report, the employees. Getting it out of them is not a formality. It is the entire case.
The first thing we do, the same day if possible, is send a written preservation demand for the surveillance footage. Not a phone call. A letter that creates a legal obligation and a serious consequence for destroying evidence. This is the single most valuable act in a slip and fall case, and it has a shelf life measured in days.
Then we go after everything else that proves the temporal element: the sweep logs and inspection records, the incident report, prior complaints about that same cooler or that same entrance, and the employees who were working that shift. A store that inspects on a written schedule has just handed you a timeline - and a gap in that timeline is constructive notice.
And we answer the arguments before they are made. The “open and obvious” defense is genuinely contested law in Louisiana and is not the automatic bar merchants pretend it is. The comparative fault attack matters more now that a 51% finding wipes out a claim entirely. Both have to be met with evidence, not indignation.
Mistakes that can hurt your claim
Slip and fall cases are not usually lost at trial. They are lost in the first ten days, quietly, while an injured person is at home with their leg up assuming that somebody somewhere is preserving the evidence.
Nobody is. That is the honest truth of it, and it is why the first mistake on this list is the one that matters most.
- Waiting to call. The video that proves your case is on a loop
- Leaving the store without reporting the fall and getting an incident report
- Not photographing the hazard before an employee cleans it up
- Missing the details that prove time - footprints, cart tracks, dried edges
- Failing to get the names of witnesses who saw it before you did
- Giving the store's insurer a recorded statement
- Assuming that because you fell in their store, they automatically owe you
- Posting about the fall or your recovery on social media
Recent results for injured clients
A few examples of what we've recovered for people seriously hurt by someone else's negligence.
$2,200,000
Auto Accident
$1,500,000
Catastrophic Injury
$975,000
Serious Injury
$750,000
Head Injury
$485,000
Pedestrian Accident
Prior results do not guarantee or predict a similar outcome. Every case is different and must be evaluated on its own facts.
The Full Picture
Understanding a Louisiana slip and fall claim
Louisiana wrote a statute designed to make these cases hard, and it succeeded. Here is exactly what you have to prove, why most people cannot prove it, and the one piece of evidence that changes everything - if somebody goes and gets it in time.
Merchants are not insurers of your safety
This is the philosophy underneath the entire statute, and it is the thing most people do not know when they walk into a lawyer's office. In Louisiana, a store does not owe you money simply because you were hurt on their property. Falling in a Rouses does not create a claim against Rouses.
What creates a claim is negligence - and under La. R.S. 9:2800.6, the burden of proving it sits entirely on you. You must prove the condition presented an unreasonable and foreseeable risk of harm. You must prove the merchant created it, or knew about it, or should have known about it. And you must prove they failed to exercise reasonable care. All three. Fail one and the case is over, regardless of how badly you are hurt.
We tell people this in the first conversation, because the alternative is taking someone's hope and their time and giving them nothing back.
The temporal element - where these cases die
Here is the requirement that ends more Louisiana slip and fall cases than everything else combined.
To prove constructive notice, the statute says you must show the condition existed “for such a period of time that it would have been discovered if the merchant had exercised reasonable care.” The Louisiana Supreme Court has been emphatic about what that means: there is a temporal element, and the claimant must make a positive showing of it. Proving the spill existed is not sufficient. You must prove it existed for some period of time before you fell.
Sit with how hard that is. You did not see the spill happen - if you had, you would have walked around it. You have no idea whether it had been there for forty seconds or forty minutes. And the person who does know, or could find out, is the defendant.
The statute goes further, and it goes further in the store's favor. An employee simply being in the vicinity is not, on its own, constructive notice. The absence of a written cleanup policy is not, on its own, proof of unreasonable care. Every road that looks like a shortcut has been closed on purpose.
“Proving the floor was wet is not enough. You have to prove how long it was wet.”
The video, and why we will tell you to call this week
There is exactly one piece of evidence that reliably answers the temporal question, and the defendant owns it.
Store surveillance footage shows the spill occur. It shows the timestamp. It shows the employees who walked past it, and how many, and for how long. It shows the eight minutes or the forty minutes that elapsed before you turned into that aisle. It is not an argument. It is a recording.
And it lives on a loop that overwrites itself, often within days. No store is going to voluntarily preserve the one thing that will be used against them. But a written legal preservation demand creates an obligation to do exactly that, and destroying evidence after receiving one carries consequences a defendant genuinely does not want.
Which is why, if you take nothing else from this page, take this: the value of your slip and fall case is decaying by the hour, and it has almost nothing to do with your injuries. Call somebody this week.
Look at the spill, not just the floor
If you are reading this in the first hours after a fall, go back to your photographs, and look at the details that prove time.
Was the liquid dirty? Clean spills are new; dirty ones have been walked through. Are there cart tracks through it, or footprints? That means people came past before you did. Were the edges drying or tacky? Water evaporates on a schedule. Was there produce debris in it, or dust settled on the surface?
Every one of those details is circumstantial proof of the temporal element, and every one of them is gone within about ten minutes of an employee arriving with a mop. Photograph the hazard, not just the aisle.
What we need from you
Get medical care and keep going to it. Falls produce fractures, head injuries, and back injuries that are far more serious than they feel on the first day, particularly for older clients.
Send us everything you have: photographs, the incident report number, the manager's name, the receipt that proves you were there, the shoes you were wearing. Yes, the shoes - expect an argument about them.
And tell us honestly what happened, including the parts that worry you. Whether you were looking at your phone. Whether you had a drink. Whether the cone was there and you went around it. We can work with a bad fact we know about. We cannot work around one that surfaces on their video.
It costs nothing to find out where you stand
You do not owe us anything to have this conversation. The consultation is free, and if we take your case, you pay no attorney's fee unless we recover money for you. If we do not win, you owe us nothing.
Two generations of this family have spent nearly 50 years doing exactly this work for our neighbors in New Orleans. Call us at 504-483-3400, and let's talk about what your case is really worth.
Slip and fall FAQ
I fell in a store. Doesn't that mean they owe me?
No, and this is the most common misconception in Louisiana premises law. Merchants are not insurers of customer safety. Under La. R.S. 9:2800.6, you must prove three separate things: that the condition presented an unreasonable and foreseeable risk of harm, that the merchant created it or had actual or constructive notice of it, and that the merchant failed to exercise reasonable care. Failing any one of them ends the case.
What is 'constructive notice,' and why does everyone say it's the hard part?
Constructive notice means the hazard existed for long enough that the store would have discovered it if it had been exercising reasonable care. The Louisiana Supreme Court requires a positive showing of that time period - the temporal element. Proving the floor was wet is not enough. You have to prove it had been wet for a while. That single requirement defeats more slip and fall claims in this state than anything else.
How do I prove how long the spill was there?
Usually with the store's own surveillance video, which is why speed matters so much. Other evidence can help: dirty liquid, cart tracks or footprints through the spill, drying at the edges, sweep and inspection logs that show a gap, and witnesses who noticed it before you did. But the video is the reliable answer, and it is routinely overwritten within days.
An employee was standing right there. Isn't that notice?
Not by itself. The statute says so explicitly: the mere presence of an employee in the vicinity does not, alone, constitute constructive notice - unless it is shown that the employee knew, or in the exercise of reasonable care should have known, of the condition. It is another one of the shortcuts the legislature deliberately closed.
The store says the hazard was 'open and obvious.' Is my case over?
No. Whether a hazard being visible defeats a claim is genuinely contested law in Louisiana, and the Louisiana Supreme Court has addressed the fact that the doctrine does not appear in the premises liability statutes themselves. Visibility is part of the analysis of whether a condition was unreasonably dangerous. It is not the automatic bar that stores like to present it as.
How long do I have to file a slip and fall claim?
Generally two years for falls on or after July 1, 2024. But that is not the deadline that should worry you. The video that proves your case may be gone in a week. Treat this as a matter of days, not years.
I fell at an apartment complex, not a store. Is it the same law?
No, and that is often good news. The merchant statute applies to merchants. Falls at apartment complexes, office buildings, parking garages, and private property are generally governed by Louisiana Civil Code articles 2317.1, 2322, or 2695, which have their own requirements - and do not carry the merchant statute's specific temporal burden in the same way. Which body of law governs your fall matters enormously.
Do I really need a lawyer for a slip and fall?
If you were seriously hurt, yes - and quickly. These are the most technically demanding premises cases in Louisiana, the evidence that proves them is controlled by the defendant, and it is being erased on a schedule. The consultation is free, so there is no cost to finding out where you stand.
The Forstalls Take Care of It All
Fell in a store? Let's get that video today.
Tell us what happened. Your consultation is free, there's no obligation, and you pay nothing unless we win.